How to Read a Poem | Edward Hirsch | Big Think
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2012
- How to Read a Poem
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More than anything, it’s a genre that relies on its readers.
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Edward Hirsch:
Edward Hirsch's first collection of poems, "For the Sleepwalkers," was published in 1981 and went on to receive the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (1986), received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Since then, he has published several books of poems, including "Special Orders" (2008) and "Lay Back the Darkness" (2003). His latest book, "The Living Fire" (2010), his first retrospective collection, selects from each of his seven previous collections, published between 1981 and 2008.
He has been a professor of English at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Hirsch is currently the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Question: For someone who might not be familiar with the genre, what is the best way to read a poem?
Edward Hirsch: Double Take Magazine once printed a little pamphlet in which I listed ten different things that you should do. I can’t remember all of them, but the first one was turn off the television set. I don’t think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.
The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn’t exist or in here in poems alone. That readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader. And that as a reader you have a task to do, you have something to do. You bring your experience to it. It’s not all inherit in the poem.
The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it would wash up on land on heartland perhaps. The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it’s sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text. Celan was picking up something that the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam had written in 1916 called On the Addressee. And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, “It’s okay to do so. I’m not reading someone else’s mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it’s addressed to me.” And that when you find it you become the secret addressee of a literary text and I felt that their reader had been left out of this experience of reading poetry or what the experience of poetry was.
And so, my focus is on the reader and that the poet’s job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet’s job is to inspire some future reader. And so, as a reader you have a task to do in finding those bottles and opening up the messages and experiencing what's in them inside of yourself.
Question: How do you create that connection with your reader?
Edward Hirsch: I think that’s a connection that you can only hope for. It’s not something that you can make because it needs someone else. I find in Walt Whitman and in American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person. But, ultimately that’s a longing, not a completion, that has to be made by other readers. You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it’s well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that’s not up to you. Ultimately you’re trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can’t do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.
Recorded on February 4, 2010
who's here because of a school project/assignment
Me
@@vetrivelmurugan2968 damn you still have school ? isn't it summer break for you
I m a teacher there, so online classes are going on
kathy l. Me toooo
Me 👁️👄👁️✌🏻
I have to watch this stuff for a la class. Mrs.Boyer if you see this, it’s Shawn! I watched the videos you linked 👍🏻👍🏻
I am enjoying to read and write poems during the quarantine and the holly of the Ramadan too 😊👍🏼
You & me both 🙈
Thanks for the message!
readers bring their own experience
the poet's job is not to inspire himself but future readers
The first part, I'll paraphrase, that the meaning in poems is what you bring to the poem as a reader, this goes for all text. This is not exclusive to poetry. Overall, he seems to fail to explain how to read a poem. Maybe this video was mistitled?
@ Anthony M ....No and idk buuut i do know your comment helped me understand how to intetupt a poem alot better than this video....its also what mood u bring when its read , someone can see something so sad where another sees hope...thankyou for this simple sentence that helped me put this together so much better than the speaker....sometimes its something as simple as the wording u chose to use and the mood you brought to this comment section....and thankyou again.....i am sent from an english class from penn foster 8/25/2020...
Please caption your videos for accessibility. Your hearing impaired audience would appreciate this!
Great idea 🙏🙏🙏🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳
For the hearing imparied especially number 1 and possibly for students whom are studying wear audio is totally impossible , no head sets and for other reason like husband is sleeping and i really need to bring my grade up lollool but mostly for hearing impaired no offense ment ...
It’s available, find “cc” on top right corner and tap on it. If it’s on , it will be filled with white box.
I am not sure if it was there when you posted it back then.
Anyone else sent by Penn Foster?
i was
Cool! 😁
i was
Yes me
yes. lmao
How do interprete a line in a poem
Thanks!
Hm..there are many recipes how to read a poem :)
thx 4 for this one ..
Its like an asmr
penn foster
DUDE....I GOTTA SAY...YOU MAKE ME WANT TO DROP A LINE IN THE OCEAN SO THAT WHEN THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE RECEIVES IS, SHE/HE SMILES AND WELCOMES NEW AND WONDERFUL BLESSING TO HIS/HER LIFE. THANK YOU FOR THIS WONDERFUL VIDEO. GOOD JOB. GOD BLESS!
Bepii Force
did you do it yet? I hope you did. if that's what you felt to do, do it.
Thank you
Thanks
i love this video
Penn foster
It is useful.
Looks like you could be related to Kevin Costner. are you?
"Art is the daughter of freedom" If you lived in 1776, this wouldn't make the most sense. Fast forward to today...
Not to start an argument. Do you think that if the Founding Fathers failed in their rebellion, do you think that the glorious picture of George Washington crossing the river would be made? In the the same sense, art in Stalin russia. The people lacked the freedom to create art that critized Stalin, and Stalin had the freedom to create art to glorify him. Art is the daughter of freedom made sense in every generation. I am a Buddhist, human lives are restrained one way or another. Art is a way for human to express imagination and creativity. "Freedom also come art". The revolutionary wars came forth from the readings of the Classical literatures and John Locke, the publishment of pamplets like Common Sense and of course, the Declaration of Independent.
Yo is this guy still alive?
Can anyone answer what the three elements of reading a poem are? Lol
This man is fantastic!
We've just proven you can read poetry while exercising... to varying success :-/
Edward Hirsch.
Yo, shout out if you were sent by Ms. Hayes. Corna virus, Holly grove.
ANGLICHEE
Sup gamers
omg 🤦♀️
What's popin?
Will get out
Speech extension classes be like:
?
Why is my biker dealer giving me a poetry lesson?
As someone who's been raised by school system to have an engineering way of thinking and to be brutally honest; when i have a question about how to read a poem I'm expecting a method and some formulas as an answer. So i find this video utter nonsense.
@A_+_A no i speak Farsi
He literally talked as if reciting a poem
Not really.
Sigh school things.
Bruh this didn’t even help
The thing that I’m finding from is and searching on how to read poetry is to just read it and take it as for what it is, it’s art
😊.
No
You make me not want to listen, mind is wandering as you speak...maybe u should speak with passion about something u want to get out to people...just saying ....thanks though for the video anyhow i am going back to penn n foster page to finish reading
penn foster B)
@@boojay8103 penn foster B)
Totally did not tell me how to read poetry at all. Completely useless.
He told you something more important than how to read a poem, he told you the whole point of writing a poem, ie: to make people understand the message. Most people, probably including yourself, don't get this.
happyhornet1000 he is asking for information and instruction on pauses and how to uncover the proper fitting flow of reading and reciting poetry. So, yes-this clip didn’t help with that at all
only people who can read poems understand this video...
Yes, and after all that, his message is, "Do your best." Duh!
nope
Poetry is like tofu. No one likes it, and people that say they like it are just lying to themselves
What the heck?
This video is misnamed. I did not learn how to read a poem at all, and frankly, I couldn't focus on the guy because I kept focusing on the deep slanted line above his left eyebrow. Completely distracting. This also might be because I don't really care for poetry.
It is useful.